Last weekend’s reporting of the freedom-sapping effects of same-sex marriage legislation is a potential game-changer in the long-running debate.

After years of the gay lobby saying there were no consequences to changing the definition of marriage, suddenly mainstream media is waking up to the fact that this is not true.

Concerns that ACL and others have raised for years about the impacts on freedom of speech and religion are now being taken seriously by serious journalists.

The action against Hobart Archbishop Julian Porteous and the entire Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference in the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commission has woken journalists at News Corp with a jolt.

The action is by Greens political candidate and transgender activist, Martine Delaney, who has claimed offence under the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act over a Catholic booklet entitled “Don’t Mess with Marriage”.

The booklet contains all of the key arguments our side of the debate would want to use in the up-coming people’s vote or plebiscite on marriage.

Perhaps this is why the Greens want to use the big stick of the law to maintain their advantage in what has been to date a propaganda war.

I was pleased to be interviewed last week by The Australian’s legal affairs reporter, Nicola Berkovic. She quoted me accurately and also my friend Dr David van Gend of the Australian Marriage Forum. Her piece, Tongue-tied by the thought police is well worth reading and worth the price to get through The Australian’s paywall.

Sadly the Fairfax Media’s The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald have reported nothing of the action against the bishops.

I sat next to a senior Fairfax journalist at a Christmas lunch last week at Parliament House. He had not heard of the Porteous case but said journalists should be the first to defend free speech. Hear, hear!

Of course, our freedoms are not the primary reason for supporting marriage the way it is.

A change perpetrates a terrible injustice on children who will be deliberately denied their mother or father.

No one denies that two men can love a baby and be good parents. But it is not right to take a baby from her or his mother to satisfy the “equality” demands of two men.

The same goes for two women using anonymous sperm donation to deprive a child of her or his father.

It is good that the media are reporting same-sex marriage’s threats to basic civil liberties.

It now needs to investigate the flow-on effects of “marriage equality” – namely the ethics of taking children from their parents through assisted reproductive technology to satisfy the demands of unrelated adults.